In a bid to fight local water pollution, Shanghai will invest more than 1 billion yuan this year in treating 24 heavily-polluted rivers in the suburbs. One-third of them are expected to become clean within three years.

Meanwhile, work has begun on the construction of waste-water treatment facilities in Xujing and Huaxin towns of Qingpu District, Chengqiao town of Chongming Island and the southern part of Songjiang District. The city will also start to build waste-water treatment plants in such rural districts as Jiading, Fengxian and Nanhui this year.

By 2008, about 90 percent of the city's rural areas will have waste-water treatment systems.

(Shanghai Daily January 6, 2006)